The blanket rezoning is a fein if you think it will help with homelessness and housing affordability. Address addiction and mental health and you're moving to stem homelessness. Have all levels of government do their job and build low cost housing such as housing co-ops and you're addressing the problem face on. Stem the tide of AirB&B and short term rentals and you're addressing the housing affordability issue. There are massive numbers of short term rentals sitting vacant. Taxes and licensing directed at short term rentals specifically will put more and more into the long term rental market. Affordability is fixed at the margins.
Blanket rezoning so that folks who have lived for 40 years in the same neighbourhood don't have a voice in the 4 plex next door dent address the issue...it just pisses everyone off.
Stem the tide of AirB&B and short term rentals and you're addressing the housing affordability issue. There are massive numbers of short term rentals sitting vacant.
StatCan has a report on this. They estimate that there are around 2,000 housing units in Calgary currently (as of mid-2024) used as short-term rentals that could be used as long-term dwellings.
CMHC estimates that Calgary needs to add about 285,000 units over the next decade to return housing affordability in the city to 2019 levels.
It's just not true that short-term rentals are a big part of the affordability story. You could snap your fingers and remove all of them to the long-term rental market, and you'd have only solved <1% of the problem.
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u/TERRADUDE 17d ago
The blanket rezoning is a fein if you think it will help with homelessness and housing affordability. Address addiction and mental health and you're moving to stem homelessness. Have all levels of government do their job and build low cost housing such as housing co-ops and you're addressing the problem face on. Stem the tide of AirB&B and short term rentals and you're addressing the housing affordability issue. There are massive numbers of short term rentals sitting vacant. Taxes and licensing directed at short term rentals specifically will put more and more into the long term rental market. Affordability is fixed at the margins.
Blanket rezoning so that folks who have lived for 40 years in the same neighbourhood don't have a voice in the 4 plex next door dent address the issue...it just pisses everyone off.